The risks of any body contouring surgery after weight loss or the risks of any surgery, a general principle applies with any body contouring after weight loss that we must accept some degree of scar to achieve that much better form. In other words, there's incisions that require healing. So, anytime we make an incision there's a very small chance that the incisions may not heal well or may open up. Therefore, we want to make sure your healing potential is really good, we want to make sure that you're not smoking and you're away from second-hand smoke so that we can optimize your healing potential.

The second consideration in terms of the risks for surgery are fluid collections, also know as seromas, or for your own body fluid builds up where we remove all that excess skin and fat. The way we prevent these fluid collections are we use drains. Drains are small plastic silastic tubes that allow any of that excess fluid building up to exit out so those areas heal down.

Bleeding is a risk of any surgery, fortunately, blood loss risks are extremely, extremely rare with the state of the art techniques that we utilize in surgery, but bleeding is a risk of any surgery, so we definitely want to check your blood counts before surgery to make sure you're not anemic and that you're healthy to proceed with surgery.

Also, with any contouring surgery and for any surgery for that matter, there's always a risk of blood clots, also known as deep venous thrombosis or DVTs, and the way we prevent blood clots include massage boots during your surgery to keep the blood circulating in your calf. Early ambulation is very important after surgery because you get your own blood circulating naturally so you don't get a blood clot and on certain patients when we may consider blood thinners temporarily after surgery such as Lovenox to also further prevent blood clots.